The Political Determinants of Implementing Decentralisation: The Construction of Spain’s State of Autonomies

Over the last 40 years, Spain has converted itself into a highly decentralized state similar to many well-established federations. However, unlike formal federations, the exact distribution of powers has been the object of political bargaining between the national and regional entities. This involved a two-step process by which regional government firstly negotiated with the national governments which powers will be allocated to the sub-national entities, and secondly when these will be effectively transferred. This paper looks into the political determinants behind the second step. Particularly, we test whether the level of partisan congruence among different governments and the electoral calendar benefited some regions in detriment of the rest. For testing this argument, we use survival analysis on a dataset comprising all policy transfers issued by the national government since 1980.